Why does the game install so incredibly slow?

kitsinni · June 2014

I had issues with my game and support told me to reinstall. After 2 1/2 hours I'm sitting at 6%. I have a 20 MB connection and it downloads between 200 kb/s and 1Mb/s. This is by far the slowest I have ever experienced for a game. Also it won't even attempt to install without 60 GB of free space.

I understand the long wait on launch but to expect people to wait 6+ hours to reinstall is a little absurd.

moloTov · June 2014

...especially when you have to reinstall as a workaround for their broken game.

Sihnfahl · June 2014

The issue appears to be the speed at their end, whether it be from network bottleneck, load balancing issues or poorly written file transfer routines.

Best I've ever managed is 3MB/s out of them.

kitsinni · June 2014

8 1/2 hours later and it is getting close to finishing. Support sends a copy/paste email on how to restart my router lol.

If you are going to have extremely slow download servers and very jumpy speeds the least ZOS could do is allow us to download the package and put it on an external hard drive instead of forcing the download through this god awful client. I guess this is the penalty for getting the preorder from Zenimax instead of buying the box from a third party.

Sihnfahl · June 2014

Here's an amusing thing I found from one software vendor at my workplace.

Turns out they used beta code from an open-source FTP client/server project, which was notoriously buggy....

I wouldn't be surprised if the same occurred here.

GossiTheDog · June 2014

They use Akamai, which is a (professional) content distribution service. However for whatever reason ZOS downloads are very slow. I think it's tiered depending on how much they pay Akamai.

kitsinni · June 2014

My download speed peaked around 2.5 mB/s and went as low as 62 kB/s. 62 kB/s is like 90 dial up speeds. If it even stayed at a consistant modes 1 mB/s it would go significantly faster. I'm not sure why it drops so low so often.

It is kind of a slap in the face when they know this is happening and they send you a copy/paste email about how to reset your router as if it was something I am doing wrong. I have installed this game on four machines and they have all been this slow, just with every update it takes even longer.

I even had a ZOS support person confirm it took them 9 hours to install it at their home and then they tell me to reset my router as if that would fix a problem.